A woman's face stared out at him through the rocket's translucent nose, a beautiful face inside a platinum helmet. Barstac didn't stop to think; he leaped upward, swung himself to the top of the rocket's skin and pressed the stud that should open the cockpit. He grabbed desperately.
He screamed as he felt his helmet crack; they'd gotten a line. The frigid cold clutched his face. He choked for oxygen, tried to yell. He staggered back and collapsed across the top of the rocket.
He buried the opening on top of his helmet in his arms, released all available oxygen. It gave him a few seconds, but he couldn't move. He dimly saw the girl raise up through the cockpit. Nothing made any sense then. She had the heat gun in her hand and was firing. She was lifting him, throwing him over her shoulder, carrying him back toward the cockpit!
In this light gravity it wasn't a feat of strength. But it made no sense to Barstac. None at all. A woman he'd never seen, saving him. For what?
All the lights went out then. Barstac stopped being curious....
It was very still—somewhere. Very still.
Phobos shine came in through the plastex of the rocket and the controls were quiet in front of him. A dead sea bottom stretched away outside as far as anyone would want to see. Lichen and fungus, and a few of those big blind Martian beetles wandering, following the direction of the hurtling moon. And then Barstac saw Deimos rising, shining like a monstrous beckoning firefly through the night.
He felt a terrible lassitude. He just sat there, his head against the plastex looking out. He knew he wasn't alone in the rocket, but he didn't look at who was beside him; he stared upward at Deimos.
For ten years in that Martian Prison for Incorrigibles, he had planned escape. And the only escape was to Deimos. Once, a man could escape into the unlimited expanse of the stars; but in the New System, the nets were too tight.